Oh Hey Everyone, Tyler the Creator Said He’s Not Homophobic, So He Definitely Must Not Be Homophobic

During an interview in the current issue of NME, of-the-moment shock-rapper Tyler the Creator addressed the people who’ve expressed concern or just outright anger at his liberal use of the word “faggot,” both in his music and on his unreadable Twitter feed. His defense is pretty much what you’d expect.

It hurts me when people can’t see beyond the first layer. They don’t listen to the word play, or the patterns we use in the song, or the vocabulary we use. They just look at the word ‘sodomise,’ or ‘rape,’ or ‘bitch’ or some shit, and just go like ‘Oh my god, did you hear what he just said?’ No, did you hear how he said it? The terms he used to say it?

A lot of people take stuff too seriously. So some of the time it’s actually for them, my subconscious doing it on purpose, just to piss them off. I want people to take that stuff too seriously, especially shit like that. But, just, whatever. I try to preach be yourself and do what you want. It’s not our fault if they’re fucking dumb enough to believe this shit… I just turned 20. I’m just living life and having as much fun as I can. I don’t think about shit like that.

Oh boy. I don’t know why we can’t expect a 20-year-old to understand that his use of a particular word is actually counterproductive and hurtful, and that the people who are offended by it maybe aren’t just “taking stuff too seriously.” Even worse than that, though, is this idea that he expects those people to be able to see past how they feel and praise him for his fucking word play. It’s a notion that would be laughable in any other part of society or, really, even in any other art form, and is here as well. We need to stop pretending otherwise. [NY Mag]

7 Comment

Mike Conklin is either retarded, or racist. This is also one of the worst written articles I’ve ever read. When people say things, they can be joking. So, when he talks about rape and sodomizing, it’s not serious. Eminem/Slim Shady/Marshall Mathers does the same exact thing in majority of his earlier work. This article was written by someone who “can’t read beyond the first layer.” You’re an idiot. Fuck you. Get real.

The way I see it, when it comes to a rapper saying whatever, take their justification of it and see if it would hold up if he were a white rapper dropping the n-word (with a hard r). Bet you ten bucks it wouldn’t fly. Sorta hypocritical if you ask me, but hip-hop culture was birthed from social inequality in the first place… so the whole situation is sorta fucked if you’re trying to make everyone happy. That being said, Tyler’s music is pretty good.

Still, he answered the question truthfully is he himself homophobic? I doubt it, unless Syd who is a lesbian likes being around people that discriminate against her, furthermore, as an artist that releases albums under a pseudonym, the music that he puts out is not necessarily a representation of who he actually is (I doubt he